Over 70 students were celebrating at Tytherington School last week as they received exceptional national Hurdle Test results for Mandarin. Hurdle Tests are the name given to the exams taken by all students across the country who are on the government’s Mandarin Excellence Programme. They involve tests in all four skills: listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing, and the examinations were taken in June.

Initial analysis suggests that the students at Tytherington School have scored significantly higher than the National average for the programme. Headteacher, Mr Emmanuel Botwe said:

“I am blown away by the results we received this week. The national average score for Year 7s was 84% and our students scored an average of 95%. For Year 8 the national average is 67% and our students achieved an average score of 78%. In Year 9 our students averaged 85% versus the national average of 65%. These are an extraordinary set of results. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the hard work of the students who have worked tirelessly over lockdown to keep up with their work. A huge thank you must go to Mrs Kang who is a phenomenal Mandarin teacher. We are very lucky to have her.”

The students were ecstatic as they received their results. Erin Vincent (Current Year 9) said: “I am very proud of what I achieved in the Hurdle Test, and it is especially rewarding when you know hard work has paid off. Mandarin is a challenge but, at the same time, it is so much fun and an interesting language to learn. I really enjoy the fact that it is very different from other languages, and it has allowed me to experience a different work ethic that I will hopefully benefit from in the future.”

Benjamin Thomas (Current Year 8) said: “I am very happy with my Mandarin Hurdle Test result. The good results are a huge accomplishment (and relief), especially so after learning Mandarin in an online environment for several months. It feels like the hard work has really paid off.

I really enjoy learning Mandarin because of the unique opportunity it provides to learn this totally new language. Some aspects of learning a language like Mandarin are challenging, my parents can’t help me with my homework and the volume of work is quite hard to juggle but that has taught me to be very organized when it comes to completing my homework.”

The Mandarin Excellence Programme  is a unique yet intensive language programme which now has over 5,000 pupils from 75 schools in England on track to fluency in Mandarin Chinese. It is funded by the Department for Education and delivered by the UCL Institute of Education in partnership with the British Council.